Do Something, Anything!

We all have days when we don’t feel like working. Maybe you didn’t get enough sleep last night. Maybe (hopefully) you didn’t get enough sleep last night because someone cool kept you awake. Maybe you have one of those annoying, toddler-without-breakfast type of tummy aches. Whatever the case, you’re sitting at your desk and your eyelids feel like someone attached invisible weights to each eyelash. It’s literally a struggle to keep your head from bobbing around on your neck like a string.

If so, ladies and gents, I hope there are no urgent deadlines pending. If not, your tired day might be the perfect time to clean up, organize and strategize. Make some lists. I find that thinking and list-making don’t take nearly as much concentration as say, focusing on really small print for two or three hours.

If you do have urgent deadlines pending, get up and walk around. Drink some water. Stretch. Eat an apple for some natural sugar to perk you up. Do these things over and over until you’re over the lazy-boy hump. It would not do for your boss to visit your cubicle and find you head on hand, snoring, when he’s waiting for a status report on the next phase of your big-budget IT performance project. Visit the local Starbucks or coffeehouse as a last resort, if you must, though I don’t personally endorse this type of behavior. It’s cheaper and healthier for you to take advantage of the packets of tea in the company kitchen with their natural, less kick-you-in-the-can shot of caffeine.

Whatever strategy works best for you, use it. It’s very important for the upwardly mobile career-minded IT pro to consistently be seen at his or her best. No one is perfect, so there will be times when you, for lack of a more descriptive phrase, ‘show-your-behind,’ but those times should be far and very few in between those moments of illustrative information technology brilliance.

Your career is sort of like a sport, and you are an athlete. With careful training, a close eye on your tools (body, mind, computer, etc.), a little talent and a lot of dedication, you should be able to steadily progress until you are the best, one of the best or at least extremely competent. So get your beauty/brain sleep, or your career might be the next thing caught napping.